Authors: Mary Whistler
Penny followed her into the haberdashery department, and watched her match a piece of fine woollen material with a lovely suede belt that would look enchanting about her slender middle. And then they made for the restaurant and ordered tea, but before it arrived Veronica suddenly glanced at her watch and uttered a cry.
“Heavens, I’ll have to fly! I’ve got someone picking me up at half-past seven, and before that I’ve got to get home and bath and change. So long, darling!” She hurriedly gathered up her few parcels and drew on her gloves. “I’ll telephone sometime tomorrow and we’ll fix another date for a shopping spree.”
Penny tried to detain her.
“But, Veronica, I don’t want any tea, and I ought to get home, too. Stephen will be wondering
...
”
Veronica made a dismissing gesture.
“Of course he won’t! You’re not a baby! And you’ve already ordered tea. You’ll have to wait for it. Goodbye, darling,” and she smiled brilliantly, hugged her parcels and made for the doors. Just before she disappeared she waved to her cousin, and Penny felt too surprised to move.
Then a voice beside her uttered her name very quietly.
“How nice to see you again, Mrs. Blair!”
She looked up into the face of Roland Ardmore, and he slid into the seat vacated by Veronica. He was gazing at her admiringly
...
with so much admiration in his light blue eyes that at first she couldn’t account for it, and then she remembered her altered appearance and the little leopard-skin cap on her shining gold hair.
“What have you done to yourself?” he demanded. “I always thought you were quite lovely, but now
...
!” The “now” spoke volumes, and Penny coloured.
“It’s my new clothes,” she explained. “Veronica and I have been doing a lot of shopping, and I’m wearing one of my new outfits. Also I’ve had something done to my face ... a special beauty treatment!”
“You didn’t need it,” he said, regarding her with an intentness that made her feel uncomfortable. “With your type of face—and especially your eyes—you don’t need beauty treatments. But green is the one colour you ought to wear always. It’s perfect for anyone who looks like you, half human, half dryad.”
She coloured still more, and looked down at the teapot.
“Can I pour you some tea? I’ll ask the waitress to bring another cup, shall I? How odd that on my first visit to London since we left Cornwall we should
meet like thi
s, accidentally—”
“It isn’t accidental,” he corrected her, without pretence. “Your cousin Veronica got in touch with me a few days ago—I don’t know how she found out my address, but she managed it!—and said that you would both be coming to London today, and would I like an opportunity to see you again. Of course I seized at the opportunity, and here I am!”
Penny regarded him in absolute amazement.
“You mean that Veronica
—
? But why should
she? Why should she imagine you wanted to see me?”
“Because, whatever you are—and you are the antithesis of your cousin, aren’t you?—Miss Veronica Wilmott is an exceptionally shrewd young woman who never neglects to grind an axe that might yield dividends one day. That’s a bit of a mixed metaphor, but in more straightforward language she knew I only painted you because I wanted to see more of you, and, once the portrait was painted, I might have waited a long time before I saw you again
...
but for her intervention!”
“But—but why
...
?” She felt herself floundering as she looked into his blue eyes, and then in confusion she looked away. “And it isn’t like Veronica to put herself out for—anyone!”
“I’m very sure of that,” he murmured. “That’s why I said she had an axe to grind.”
She picked up the sugar-tongs and poised them over his cup. He shook his head.
“I don’t take milk and I don’t take sugar. In fact, I don’t very often take tea
...
but this is an occasion! I’ve been waiting for it all day.”
She looked down nervously into her own cup, and then in sudden vexation she looked straight at him.
“Mr. Ardmore, I didn’t expect to meet you here, and I ought to be on my way home to my husband. I don’t like to leave him alone too long, and I can’t waste time sitting here talking to you. If you really came here to see me I’m astounded, for you could have seen both me
and
my husband if you’d paid us a visit at Old Timbers. You had only to write or get
in touch with us by telephone—”
“Can’t you forget your husband for five minutes?” he said patiently. “He and I will never burn with desire to see one another and although, of course, he can’t see—”
“Please!” she said.
“He resented every minute of the time I spent painting you. I could feet it when he sat there watching me through those dark glasses of his—”
“But you know he’s
blind
!”
she interrupted hotly.
“And I wondered why you ever married him, because although he didn’t want you to have a life of your own he had no use for you himself, and he just wallowed in a quagmire of pity for himself while you—poor little thing!
...”
He could see that she was very much upset, and her cheeks were flaming.
“I don’t know how you can talk in such a way about a man who has suffered as Stephen has suffered,” she choked.
“In what way has he suffered so much?” he demanded. “He lost his sight and he lost his job, but he has enough money to live very comfortably for the rest of his life, and in addition to a devoted manservant he has a devoted wife whom he very nearly killed when he smashed up his car and himself. Oh, I know he also lost a
fiancée
just before the car accident, but that’s something he ought to feel grateful about now. Do you think the beautiful Veronica would have been as self-sacrificing, and as content to remain in the background, as you have these last few months?”
“If Stephen had married Veronica,” Penny replied, licking her dry lips, “there wouldn’t have been any accident.”
“Perhaps not. But there
might
have been
...
Life is strange, you know, and I can’t see her bear-leading him as you have done. Even now—when she wants to get him back
...
And you do know she wants to get him back, don’t you?”
Penny nodded, wondering if it was possible to conceal anything from this man.
“Even now I think he’ll be a fool if he listens to her, if he so far forgets all that he owes to you—all that he might have done to
you
!
—as to put you out of his life and take her back into it! Only a man who is mentally, morally and physically blind would do that, but a clever woman can achieve a great deal when she makes up her mind to it. Your cousin Veronica is clever as well as beautiful—perhaps I should also mention that she’s hard up!—and one of the reasons why I jumped at the opportunity of seeing you today was because I knew I ought to warn you. To fight if you think it’s worth it ... to give up if you
think
it’s not!”
Penny looked down at the tablecloth, and he knew that her eyes were dark pools of anguished cairngorm that didn’t want to be investigated too closely just then.
“And if I decide that it’s better not to fight
...
?” she said, at last.
“I think that would be a wise decision,” Ardmore told her, quietly, gravely. “But I haven’t come here to influence you
...
only warn you. I don’t know why you married Stephen Blair as you did, but if it was simply and solely for a home and a husband who could keep you comfortably that was a crazy thing to do. If
it was because you love the
man—
”
She was silent, but he saw the muscles of her slender throat contract.
“That was still more crazy! For you’re not the type to stand up and fight for what you want, as your cousin would in the circumstances, and your husband hasn’t the sense to know when he’s rejecting the gold for the dross. Having seen the two of you together I know that he hasn’t so far given you anything at all, and if he’s to go on being blind he’ll give you less. If he recovers his sight...”
“He’s seeing the specialist, Sir Robert Bolton, again in a couple of weeks,” Penny said in a whisper.
“Then if he regains his sight you’ll still lose, for a man with eyes to see—a man who imagines himself in love, and whose love is as determined as Miss Wilmott to have him in the end!—won’t be aware of you at all.
If
it isn’t imagination, and he’s genuinely in love, then you won’t hold him for five minutes!”
Penny swallowed again.
“I wouldn’t want to hold him,” she said, “if he wanted to go.”
“And you do want him to regain his sight?”
“More than anything else in the world!” There was so much dedicated fervour in her voice that it shook him. “And I’ll give him back to Veronica if that’s what they both want.”
He took a card out of his pocket and slid it across to her.
“That’s my address,” he said. “An address that will always find me. If you lose your fight—which I don’t think you’ll even put up!—remember that I’m not mentally, morally or physically blind! And I can pass over dross very easily when there’s gold about!”
CHAPTER XIV
When P
enny arrived back at Old Timbers she was not entirely surprised to be greeted by Stephen in one of his blackest moods. He had had a very dull day, and nothing Waters had been able to do for him had pleased him. Waters opened the door for Penny after she had garaged the car, and merely by looking at her he passed on to her a warning that she would need to proceed cautiously once she had entered the room where Stephen awaited her.
It was the library of the house, an exceedingly comfortable room which they had come to use more than any other room in the house, and Stephen’s specially selected chair was drawn close to the leaping flames of the log fire when Penny arrived. Although the days were lengthening, and already there was a definite feeling of spring in the air, Stephen’s inactive life made him feel the cold, and tonight there was a bleak look in his face, as if he were cold internally, when Penny looked at him.
Beside him, on a table drawn conveniently close to his elbow, was a generous-sized drink—and Penny regarded this as a bad sign, for normally Stephen waited for her to join him before dr
inking
an aperitif.
“So you’re back at last!” he said ungraciously, as she closed the door.
“I’m sorry if you’ve had a long day, Stephen,” Penny said remorsefully, as she hastened across to his chair. “But I got held up in the traffic coming home, and there was nothing I could do to hurry things.”
“You could have cut your day shorter,” Stephen returned, “and got home before the rush hour. But I suppose you were enjoying yourself so much that you didn’t want to do that!”
Penny felt as if he had given her a sharp slap across the face.
“We had rather a hectic day.”
“Did you spend all that money I gave you? How many bills am I going to receive in addition? If you’re going to turn out to be an extravagant wife I’ll have a notice inserted in
The Times
to the effect that I refuse to be responsible for your debts!”
He was half laughing, jibing at her rather cruelly, as if for the first time that day he had discovered a means of enjoying himself, but Penny was in no mood to be the subject of his perverted humour. She stood very still beside his chair, saying nothing, and suddenly he caught the delicate fragrance of her, and lifted his chin and wrinkled his nostrils the better to inhale it.
“Come here,” he said. “You smell very good. What have you been doing to yourself? Did you buy that perfume I told you to buy?”
“No, but I had a hair-do, and I had a good many things done to my face. I can’t tell you exactly what happened to it, but it feels different, and I believe it looks different. The assistant said I had been neglecting my skin, and she used a whole lot of lotions and creams to improve matters.”
She was talking quickly and nervously, because she wasn’t sure how interested he would be, but he held out a hand impatiently towards her and insisted that she kneel down close to him so that he could test the improvement for himself. His fingers fastened on the little fur cap, and he tossed it carelessly away, although it had cost so much Penny couldn’t bear to think of the price, and then he caught at the ends
Of
her silken cloud of hair.
“It’s shorter, but it feels wonderful.” There was a note almost of sensuous pleasure in his voice. “Oh, Penny, you’ve got the most beautiful hair, and whatever they’ve done to it they’ve made it smell like a bed of roses. Or is it new-mown hay and sunlight?” He sniffed ecstatically, and drew her head so close that she could feel his breath stirring her hair. “It feels like silk,” he said softly, “pure silk!”
Penny held her breath.
The sensitive tips of his surgeon’s fingers touched her face.
“You always had a baby’s skin,” he murmured, “and now it’s a very young baby’s skin.” She heard him catch his breath. “I wish I could see you, Penny. What are you wearing? Describe it to me. I know it’s new.”
She told him, “Dark green velvet, and there’s an absurd little hat that goes with it, made of fur.”
“That thing I threw across the room just now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t bother about that. If you like fur hats you shall have a dozen of them, and if you like going to beauty parlours you shall go to one every day in the week.” He took another sensuous sniff at her hair. “It’s violets you smell of, Penny
...
fields and fields of violets!”
Then he let her go and sat back in his chair and sighed.
“I’m glad you’re back, Penny. I missed you horribly, and I’ve been thinking of you in all that traffic
...
wishing you’d taken Waters with you. The clumsy idiot could do nothing right for me today, and I’m afraid I lost my temper with him. I’m afraid I’m always losing my temper nowadays.”
“It’s not your fault,” Penny said softly, instantly. “And we understand ... you know that!”
“Do you?”
He extended his hand again, and she put hers into
it.
“There was rather an important telephone call
today.”
“Oh—Oh, yes?”
“Bolton’s secretary rang. He’s got to go off somewhere in about ten days’ time—flying to the Bahamas, or somewhere like that, to operate on a millionaire who’s living there to avoid tax—and he wants to see me tomorrow, if I’m not too decrepit. I said I
’
d be there, and that you’d go along with me to hold my hand. Will you do that, Penny?”
“Of course.” But her heart had given such a wild bound, such a startled bound, that the subsequent rapid beating of it interfered with her breathing, and she sounded as if she had been running uphill. “Does that mean he
...
he expects to find an improvement?”
He shrugged.
“Could be. I don’t know what he expects to find, I’m—not even hoping. But we must give the chap a chance to prove himself a miracle worker if miracles are still possible. And apparently he thinks the time is ripe to see me now, and doesn’t want to wait until he gets back from the Bahamas.”
Penny found herself clinging on to his hand.
“Oh, Stephen, I ... I shall dread tomorrow!” She
a
ctually felt sick, as if the shock had been too much for her, coming on top of such a wearing day, and she couldn’t prevent herself from uttering the words aloud. She knew that one reason for the sick sensation was the dread she had that, if Stephen was not given any hope at all—in spite of his insistence that he wasn’t even hoping—his reaction would be so disastrous that it would be better if Sir Robert Bolton had refrained from making the appointment to see him.
On the other hand ... if there
was
hope
...
She got up slowly from her knees, and felt as if they might buckle up at any moment under her.
Stephen remained very still in his chair, his dark head resting against the cushions, his eyes closed with sudden weariness behind his dark glasses, his long, elegant legs stretched out in front of him.
“Let’s have a drink, Penny,” he said, in a detached voice. “Better pour yourself one, too!”